


Ascend

by mementomoe



Category: The Martian - Andy Weir
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-20
Updated: 2016-12-20
Packaged: 2018-09-07 12:53:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8801560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mementomoe/pseuds/mementomoe
Summary: “This is something I’ve done a few times before, but never with a jury-rigged mess like this.” - The Martian, Sol 549





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [valleyd](https://archiveofourown.org/users/valleyd/gifts).



Mark Watney always wanted to go to space. He grew up at the end of the age of the International Space Station, and remembered reading about Scott Kelly’s Year In Space as a kid, how it helped understand how the human body in freefall, and potentially microgravity, over long periods of time.

He also, in his own opinion, was damn good at Mechanical Engineering and Botany. They were both chosen in college as areas of study purely so he would look good if he got a chance to sign up to join NASA.

And he got in. He further went through basic training well. What had started off as thousands of applicants across several countries and Space Agencies went to about 500 hopefuls for 30 spots. Training had cut the 500 hopefuls down to about 100 astronauts. The Five commanders of the five planned missions had each been chosen. His two favorites were Commander O’Brien and Commander Lewis, who were rumored as both popular choices for Ares 1’s Commander and first person on Mars.

However, it wouldn’t be his first time in space. The latest iteration of ISS was up about 500 km above the earth, and he was one of the five hopefuls for the Ares program going up in the Rocket for this month with Commander Varga. Ernestine wasn’t his favorite of the five Commanders, but she was competent during the plans for this trip. She just seemed to not quite take to the humor made among the other five members as they got to know each other.

His job? It only proved botany was worth the extra year of Undergraduate Studies. He was in charge of studying the growth of the plants. It was also his job to design and build the hydroponics. Not the first time it happened, but these were supposed to be used in the trip to and from Mars on Hermes.

It was the day in question, though. He was strapped between the Pilot, Major Rick Martinez, and a medical Doctor, Chris Beck. He’d gotten to know all the crewmates, but the seats helped.

There’d been several simulations they all went through, with so many scenarios that could go wrong on both launch and landing. While Martinez seemed easy-going and had once joked about seeing if he could get the craft to do a barrel roll, he took the actual simulations seriously.

Mark thought it would have been awesome if had tried once, but they never knew if the sim would be a failure sim, and he didn’t want to take the risk.

“Fuel Pressure Green, ready for launch,” CAPCOM said. “We are ready for Preflight Checklist, Commander.”

Everything went through normal. Commander Samara and Major Martinez spoke when needed. Beck, Mark, and the others didn’t need to.

The countdown was restarted at sixty seconds, and it seemed odd. He’d heard the words dozens of time, seen simulated blue skies from a replica acceleration chair, near impossible to tell from the one he was in, the true sky he saw in front of him, however, the engines started at Tee-minus-six-seconds, it was completely different from the simulator. The thrust was purely from his back, and didn’t shake so much as push. Like the Giant Drop at Six Flags, only he was facing up, not out. Linear Induction roller coasters didn’t feel like a good comparison.

Those six seconds of warning didn’t seem like enough but too many at the same time. Time slowed, as if one of the critical failures happened. The ones they didn’t train for.

But then, he finally heard CAPCOM say “Zero.” and they  went. The tower cleared in the corner of his eye, and the comparisons failed him.

He was just a scientist, the Commander and Pilot were the ones who spoke, reading off numbers they got. The hair on the back of Mark’s neck stuck to the joint of his suit. The metal tickled, and though he did his best to stay focused on the darkening sky.

Thrust stopped, and for a moment, his body lifted up. Freefall. He couldn’t undo the straps for the moment, though. Circularization and course corrections to reach the station were still upcoming.

Time to apogee was announced, along with the inclination of the orbit. Mark tried to do the math, but at the same time, he was in space. He was currently 123.6 miles, or 198.9 kilometers, above the surface of the Earth, and rising.

Hundreds of people had felt this before, and four others joined him at the same time, but it still felt, for a moment, that they were the first six in space.

He had to hand it to Martinez, though, the man was efficient with the burns. He started and ended on cue. Everything after was nominal, right down to the adjustments.

“CAPCOM,” Varga said over her headset. “Atalanta Five has reached the station. We are commencing pressurization and will begin transfer soon.”

Watney was the fifth of the six to go through the node connecting the craft from the station, with only Varga behind him.

“Everyone,” Varga said. “We’ll gather our supplies, but for now, let me show you to the bunks. For the six of us, there should be enough for each person to have a private room, just like in Hermes.”

Watney followed them, though free-fall was a new experience. He had to remember to push on the sides. This was not something even training had helped.

He looked to his right and saw Michaels. Michaels had been the second off, after Martinez, and had been the first to follow Varga, but for the moment, didn’t look well.

“Hey, y’look greener than the Hulk right now. Are you okay?”

“Watney,” Varga said. “Don’t say things like that. Not everyone acclimates well.”

Watney frowned, but offered his hand to Michaels.

He refused it and pushed forward.

“I have to agree with Watney,” Dr. Beck said. “I think Michaels can head to sickbay for now. Show us the way. You can help us find rooms later. Especially since Martinez had a very smooth flight. This has to be motion-sickness.”

Watney held out his hand again. “Let me help you, Michaels.”

Michaels took it that time.

Varga nodded her head. “Very well, Doctor, we’ll pass the bunks first. The others can pick theirs first. If you see a name on the door, It’s taken.”

The Commander opened up one of the rooms, and showed each of them around. Previous orbiters and stations only had a few bunks available, with crews usually small. If there were more, the other astronauts attached themselves to safe areas to sleep. However, this station had room for up to ten people on board it at any given time. It was designed that way specifically for the training missions for Ares, and could be used for other purposes as well.

Each of them wrote their names on one of the doors. Watney floated into the room and looked out.

It felt surreal, but he was in space. With luck, he’d end up on another world.

* * *

 

It was the fifth time that day he checked the main pipe. Hermes would have to grow some of its own food, at least for one or two of the Ares missions. The reasoning was something about long-term sustainability of food, along with proper research of plant growth in microgravity, and not just freefall.

Yet the damn pipe kept freezing on the inside. It was far too narrow for the amount of water it would carry, yet when he tested that in the past, he was told otherwise. So instead, he’d have to find ways to work around it. Weight is fuel is money, after all.

“Need help?” He heard the voice of the doctor say behind him. “I think half of us here have some engineering know-how.”

Watney almost laughed. “Yet I’m the only one in this group that also knows the stability of roots in flowing water. I’m trying to find a way to balance the velocity of the water with the amount of plants we’re expected to grow on Hermes.”

Doctor Beck looked at the pipes. “I heard it was freezing, though. I know high pressure generally increases freezing point.”

Watney sighed. Water actually had a slight drop in the freezing point when pressure increased, but apparently the pressure was too much for the diameter of the pipes.

“I wish I could at least get it working long enough to get the velocity of the water pushed through the pipes. The math on paper clearly isn’t working.”

Beck looked at it. “Are you sure these are six millimeter pipes?”

“Yes, but they hole’s only four millimeters. And yes, I checked the joints. That’s not where the water’s freezing. I also used point-zero-zero-four for the diameter, not point-zero-zero-six. I’m not a freshman.”

“And you included the difference in squares when factoring in the momentum?”

Watney paused. “I think I did, but I’ll check. It is tangential to the velocity and we need the dot product, not the cross.”

That wouldn’t have been a freshman mistake. More a Junior one. But it still was not something he should have done.

When he checked the papers, his math had been correct, and he made sure he used the right products for the most part.

However, a bit lower, there was a small error. Nothing that was undergrad, thankfully. But it did prove his earlier belief.

The pipes needed to be larger. And also thicker. An inner diameter of ten millimeters and an outer diameter of at least fifteen. When he got out, he smiled and looked to Doctor Beck.

“That wasn’t the issue, but I did find the problem in the notes. This isn’t something that we can skimp on for size. If it even worked, the velocity probably would have been too high. There needs to be more room along the plant pipes.”

He had never said the six mm had been fine, not even with his calculations. Even those made it a very tight fit.

Weight was fuel was money, but in this case, there needed to be more. He’d try to alert someone later and see if he could get a larger set of pipes up to test it, or at least have his calculations left for the next mechanical engineer, with his biological information about stability of plant roots.

* * *

They had ended up being the crew during one of NASA’s Space to Ground coverage with a school. He forgot which one it was, but it was a High School somewhere in the Midwest that was not Illinois.

There was a list of the usual kinds of questions to expect. Watney had memorized a good statement of what Freefall was, as opposed to low-gravity. Namely, the former is what he dealt with here. The latter is what he’d deal with for months on Hermes between the Earth and Mars.

The math was a first semester of physics thing, there’d be an acceleration measured in the millimeters, as opposed to the still-about-9 meters-a-second he experienced in low-earth orbit. It was just everything fell at the same rate that there was an appearance of weightlessness.

Unfortunately, Michaels had gotten sick again. He had thought that there would be tests to figure it out, but apparently something in space just didn’t help.

Watney floated to the command room, which had Grady setting up the video and testing the feed. “Y’getting this?” Grady asked. “Only four of us can make it today, but I hope it works.”

Watney heard the other side, a woman in glasses. “You have no idea how much it means to the kids they get to contact you all. Space is still fascinating.”   
  
Grady laughed. “And soon, we’ll be going where no person has gone before.”

“We’re muting the Station now, since everyone’s coming in starting in about five minutes. Keep your channel open so you can all be here at that time, and remember to keep things basic. Some of these kids haven’t taken physics yet.”

The screen went blank after that. Watney smiled. “So, what questions won the little draw they have?”

Grady looked at a list. “Pretty easy things. Like what made us want to go to space? What it’s like up here. Why we want to go to Mars. A few more physics-y questions that we can hopefully answer without jargon.”

Watney held out his hand, looking at the list. He let himself float in a different direction than Grady. It mostly was more personal questions than physics questions. There was at least one with the word Microgravity in it, but thankfully that was more about the heliocentric orbit they’d take to Mars and not the freefall of Low Earth Orbit.

Varga and Martinez came in soon after.

“Watney, why are you floating in a different direction?” Varga asked.

“I want to show off freefall to the kids. As long as I don’t take up too much space, I might as well.”

“Someone might get motion-sick watching your antics.”

Watney sighed and oriented himself the same way as the others. Varga ran a tight ship. Going to Mars meant most of the commanders would be, but this was very tight. No fun allowed. He’d have to find a good question to bring up his knowledge of comics on.

  
The kids would get him there, at least.

* * *

"Commander Varga, what is your opinion on the crew?" The aide asked her.

Varga took a moment to gather her thoughts. “There is only one on my crew to the station who I cannot recommend. Michaels did not fare well in free-fall for more than a few days at a time before he got motion sick for at least twelve hours. Even keeping him away from windows didn’t help. It is a good thing we had Doctor Beck on board. Both he and Martinez are two I highly recommend to continue on the path for Ares. We need competent Physicians and Pilots, and they both exceeded expectations.”

The aide watched her for a moment. “And what of Watney and Grady?”

“I recommend Grady for my crew. He performed admirably. Watney was also highly competent, and managed to problem solve very well. He also got along remarkably with most of the crew, but I think he would be better on another commander’s team. Since O’Brien’s been chosen for Ares 1, perhaps Commander Lewis would get along with him better. His humor is.” Varga tried to find the right word. “Not for me. However Martinez and Beck both got along well with him, so as much as I’d like them for my team, their bonding means I’d rather have the three of them together. As much as I’d like those two for Ares 2, I would rather not have Watney if I took them. He needs those who appreciates his humor.”


End file.
